


Glue

by AstroGirl



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-06
Updated: 2009-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 05:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Making glue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Matrithon women over 40 challenge.

All the sounds she hears are edged with colors, the result of breathing a little too much dust from the batch of kedel powder she whipped up earlier. It's a pleasant, interesting effect, and for the last few arns she has been wandering through the ship happily observing Moya's various bright-edged hums and rich, earth-toned sighs.

Passing by an open door, she hears Crichton talking. His words, though Crichton-colorful at the edges, are dim and gray in the center. "I don't know, D'Argo. Maybe it's just me getting up on the wrong side of the bed more often, but there are times when I can't help feeling like... I dunno, like something on this ship is coming unglued. Like something that used to hold us together just isn't quite working the same anymore." Sad, bright flecks of blue flare and vanish in the gray.

"I've thought you were unglued from the first day I met you, John," says D'Argo, and his humor is a faint, warm flicker against a field of darkness.

Noranti smiles thoughtfully and hurries back to the kitchen.

**

The mixture is becoming hard to stir, making her muscles strain and ache as she forces a spoon half as tall as she is around and around the pot. That's good. Very good. The consistency is nearly right.

Crichton appears suddenly, as he so often does. "Whatcha makin' there, Grandma?" The kedel has worn off somewhere in the stirring, and there are no colorful haloes around his words. That's too bad. She misses them. She makes a mental note to experiment with the dosage later.

Crichton dips a finger into the pot, raises it to his mouth as if to taste, then thinks better of the idea and wipes it on his trousers instead.

"Glue," she says. "I'm making glue." She moves the spoon a few drenches, then dips her own finger in and tastes, slurping thoughtfully. Yes, very nearly there.

"Glue?" He gives her a puzzled look. She's always found his forehead attractive when it wrinkles up like that. "Why are you making glue?"

"I heard you talking," she says. "To D'Argo. The ship needs glue, you said. I've decided that you're right."

He laughs, and she's very sorry now that she can't see what color it is. "That was a _metaphor_, Grandma. We don't need actual _glue_."

"I understand metaphors," she says. She looks into his eyes, holding his gaze steadily while her third eye opens, blinks, and shuts. "Metaphors have power. You'd do well to remember that, Crichton." Crichton's words have more power than most, and he is not always as careful with them as he should be. Ah, well. He's very young, still. She smiles at him and goes back to stirring.

"Ooooh-kay," he says, clearly a little unnerved and trying to hide the fact, from her at least and probably from himself. "Well, just... don't glue anything that doesn't need it, all right?"

"Yes, yes, yes," she says, and shoos him away. She is done talking to him now. He mutters under his breath as he leaves the kitchen.

"Words," she whispers into the pot, as if sharing a secret. "Words and metaphors and power. Yes! And glue."

Satisfied, she pulls out the spoon.

**

There are cracks and fractures in this ship. Wounds that have healed cleanly, and wounds that have healed into scars, and wounds that will not heal at all.

Noranti hauls her pot of glue deep into Moya's body, through corridors meant more for the use of DRDs than for organic creatures, until she finds the place she's looking for.

The fissure is tiny by a Leviathan's standards, but large enough by hers. From the way it's crusted over, it's clearly been here for some time, probably a cycle or more. Longer than Noranti herself, most definitely. She wonders what misadventure put it here, whether Moya even remembers that one incident among what no doubt have been many. Very, very many.

She lifts her glue-laden spoon. She'd hoped to find a trowel, but strangely there were none in the kitchen, so the spoon will have to do. Slowly, carefully, she begins to close the crack. After a moment, a DRD comes to watch her, but it doesn't interfere.

"Does that feel good?" she asks it politely. "Does it help?"

It chirps, a happy but vaguely questioning sound.

"We do what we can," she says, smiling as she dips into the pot for more glue. "That's the secret, you know. Always doing what you can."

The wall before her thrums softly, and perhaps the kedel hasn't completely worn off after all, because she's sure she can see something warm and glowing in the sound. With a flourish, she raises the spoon again and hums along.


End file.
